A Second Chance for Fame: May Swenson Project Aims to Bring New Life to Logan's Most Renowned Poet
By Matt Wright
Published: Wednesday, March 2, 2005, in The Utah Statesman
For some it comes much later than expected. For some, it may never come, but if a few ambitious people have their way, one of Logan's most accomplished daughters will find recognition at last.
Students and faculty from Utah State University are combining forces with community members, corporate sponsors and local government officials to increase awareness of nationally recognized poet and Logan native May Swenson who passed away in 1989.
The May Swenson Project has developed in the past several years to include both small and large projects focused on bringing Swenson the acknowledgment team members believe she deserves.
"She was extremely involved with other American poets and made her living as a poet while she was alive, which is rare," graduate student and project participant Maurie Smith said. "I think [the project] will bring revenue and attention and good publicity to Logan in general. I think [Swenson] is a real credit to this place we live in."
"Within the community of American poets, she's very well known," said project chair and English professor Paul Crumbley. "Within this community [and] within American culture outside the sphere of active professional poets, she's really not that well known."
Crumbley, who came to the USU in 1995, became more aware of Swenson's life and poetry after arriving in the valley Swenson called home for 22 years. Though he had read some of her poetry in anthologies before he came, something about Swenson and her relation to the area inspired his dedication to the project.
"As I got to know the Swenson family more, as I got to know her poetry more, I began to realize that there are lots of ways that we could acknowledge this important person," Crumbley said.
Some of the proposed projects include: establishing a Swenson scholarship to cover tuition, room and board for one promising creative writing student each year, establishing a Swenson Poet in Residence program that will bring a nationally recognized poet to USU to lead student workshops and give public readings, purchasing the rights to Swenson's poetry in order to publish the first complete collection of her poems and publishing a collection of scholarly essays dedicated exclusively to Swenson.
Students and faculty from Utah State University are combining forces with community members, corporate sponsors and local government officials to increase awareness of nationally recognized poet and Logan native May Swenson who passed away in 1989.
The May Swenson Project has developed in the past several years to include both small and large projects focused on bringing Swenson the acknowledgment team members believe she deserves.
"She was extremely involved with other American poets and made her living as a poet while she was alive, which is rare," graduate student and project participant Maurie Smith said. "I think [the project] will bring revenue and attention and good publicity to Logan in general. I think [Swenson] is a real credit to this place we live in."
"Within the community of American poets, she's very well known," said project chair and English professor Paul Crumbley. "Within this community [and] within American culture outside the sphere of active professional poets, she's really not that well known."
Crumbley, who came to the USU in 1995, became more aware of Swenson's life and poetry after arriving in the valley Swenson called home for 22 years. Though he had read some of her poetry in anthologies before he came, something about Swenson and her relation to the area inspired his dedication to the project.
"As I got to know the Swenson family more, as I got to know her poetry more, I began to realize that there are lots of ways that we could acknowledge this important person," Crumbley said.
Some of the proposed projects include: establishing a Swenson scholarship to cover tuition, room and board for one promising creative writing student each year, establishing a Swenson Poet in Residence program that will bring a nationally recognized poet to USU to lead student workshops and give public readings, purchasing the rights to Swenson's poetry in order to publish the first complete collection of her poems and publishing a collection of scholarly essays dedicated exclusively to Swenson.
There are also numerous other smaller projects meant to raise local appreciation of Swenson and her poetry.
"I think that the main idea is to let people know that May Swenson's poetry is out there, that she's from Logan, and that [her poetry] is worth reading. Even someone who doesn't really read poetry can appreciate her work," said Melissa Bowles, a graduate student working on the project.
"We have to start locally, no matter what we do nationally," Crumbley said, "that seems like the logical first step."
Working closely with the May Swenson Literary Estate and local officials, team members have already met with marginal success. Campbell Scientific, Inc .— an international company that manufactures measurement and control products used worldwide in research and industry — recently donated a large sum of money toward the project. Combined with donations from other individuals, the money has already made possible the preservation of important Swenson artifacts and, pending official permission, the team is on the verge of placing a sign at the entrance to Cache Valley that reads, "Welcome to Logan, Home of May Swenson."
With every success and completion of a project, another one seems to take its place, Crumbley said.
"We have all sorts of projects that we're doing, some are practical and some are dreams, but that gives you a sense that there is no end," Crumbley said. "The people we've contacted around the country and in Europe are extremely enthusiastic and we really feel like we're at the beginning of something that will continue to grow. I feel certain that I will be working with May Swenson as long as I'm here, as long I'm mobile and sentient."
For more information on May Swenson or "The Swenson Project," contact Paul Crumbley at 797-3860 or visit the Swenson Web site at www.usu.edu/swenson. Comments can also be sent via e-mail to pcrumbley@english.usu.edu.
A Logan native, poet May Swenson lived a life far beyond the valley's borders
"I think that the main idea is to let people know that May Swenson's poetry is out there, that she's from Logan, and that [her poetry] is worth reading. Even someone who doesn't really read poetry can appreciate her work," said Melissa Bowles, a graduate student working on the project.
"We have to start locally, no matter what we do nationally," Crumbley said, "that seems like the logical first step."
Working closely with the May Swenson Literary Estate and local officials, team members have already met with marginal success. Campbell Scientific, Inc .— an international company that manufactures measurement and control products used worldwide in research and industry — recently donated a large sum of money toward the project. Combined with donations from other individuals, the money has already made possible the preservation of important Swenson artifacts and, pending official permission, the team is on the verge of placing a sign at the entrance to Cache Valley that reads, "Welcome to Logan, Home of May Swenson."
With every success and completion of a project, another one seems to take its place, Crumbley said.
"We have all sorts of projects that we're doing, some are practical and some are dreams, but that gives you a sense that there is no end," Crumbley said. "The people we've contacted around the country and in Europe are extremely enthusiastic and we really feel like we're at the beginning of something that will continue to grow. I feel certain that I will be working with May Swenson as long as I'm here, as long I'm mobile and sentient."
For more information on May Swenson or "The Swenson Project," contact Paul Crumbley at 797-3860 or visit the Swenson Web site at www.usu.edu/swenson. Comments can also be sent via e-mail to pcrumbley@english.usu.edu.
A Logan native, poet May Swenson lived a life far beyond the valley's borders
Born at 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday, May 28, 1913, May Swenson arrived as the oldest child in what would eventually be a family of 12 living in a very rural Cache Valley.
Little did anyone suspect on that early May morning what life had in store for her.
Growing up in Logan, Swenson lived a normal childhood attending school, playing kick-the-can with friends and helping her family clean, cook and harvest vegetables and fruit. From a very young age, however, Swenson loved to read and write.
At the age of 12, Swenson began keeping journal where, as she later told an interviewer, "I would discuss with myself what was happening inside me."
Raised a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Swenson admitted on certain occasions that she simply didn't believe religion was for her.
"It seems like a redundancy for a poet," Swenson said.
Though she didn't agree with her parent's religion, Swenson was never openly critical of it and even referenced some of her experiences with Mormonism in her poetry.
Writing to one of her childhood friends, Murel Morris, Swenson remembered her days in Logan as "an innocent era ... in an innocent place and society-the church out there in Utah."
Swenson attended what was then called the Utah State Agricultural College from 1930-1934, making lasting literary friendships while writing for The Herald Journal, the campus newspaper (Student Life) and the campus literary magazine (The Scribble).
Sometime during her collegiate experience, Swenson decided that she had outgrown her "pure and boring" hometown and, following her graduation, asked her parents to let her move to Salt Lake City for the summer.
Before the summer of 1936 came to an end, however, Swenson found herself traveling on a Greyhound bus for New York, planning to live in a city she had only read about in books.
For several years after her arrival, Swenson worked a number of jobs living from month to month on a meager salary. Often working as a ghostwriter or an editor, Swenson continued with her poetry until her literary breakthrough in 1949 when her poem "Haymaking" was published in The Saturday Review of Literature.
Little did anyone suspect on that early May morning what life had in store for her.
Growing up in Logan, Swenson lived a normal childhood attending school, playing kick-the-can with friends and helping her family clean, cook and harvest vegetables and fruit. From a very young age, however, Swenson loved to read and write.
At the age of 12, Swenson began keeping journal where, as she later told an interviewer, "I would discuss with myself what was happening inside me."
Raised a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Swenson admitted on certain occasions that she simply didn't believe religion was for her.
"It seems like a redundancy for a poet," Swenson said.
Though she didn't agree with her parent's religion, Swenson was never openly critical of it and even referenced some of her experiences with Mormonism in her poetry.
Writing to one of her childhood friends, Murel Morris, Swenson remembered her days in Logan as "an innocent era ... in an innocent place and society-the church out there in Utah."
Swenson attended what was then called the Utah State Agricultural College from 1930-1934, making lasting literary friendships while writing for The Herald Journal, the campus newspaper (Student Life) and the campus literary magazine (The Scribble).
Sometime during her collegiate experience, Swenson decided that she had outgrown her "pure and boring" hometown and, following her graduation, asked her parents to let her move to Salt Lake City for the summer.
Before the summer of 1936 came to an end, however, Swenson found herself traveling on a Greyhound bus for New York, planning to live in a city she had only read about in books.
For several years after her arrival, Swenson worked a number of jobs living from month to month on a meager salary. Often working as a ghostwriter or an editor, Swenson continued with her poetry until her literary breakthrough in 1949 when her poem "Haymaking" was published in The Saturday Review of Literature.
Over the next several decades, Swenson continued to work various jobs while publishing her poetry in prestigious literary magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and The Nation. Swenson also worked to publish her collections of poetry.
Swenson once said of herself and her writing, "I am having fun. To make poetry is pleasure. When you write, it has a surprise in it. It tells you something you never knew you knew, and there is no obligation in it. Life is a mystery. We must not give ourselves airs. We don't know what the answers will be."
Other accomplishments during her lifetime include the receipt of several grants and fellowships including the MacArthur Fellowship which brought Swenson $380,000. Swenson taught for a short time at Purdue University in Lafayette, Ind., and published 11 volumes of poetry during her lifetime.
Shortly before her death in 1989, Swenson made one last visit to Utah to visit her family. At the time, Swenson was living with her partner, Rozanne Knudson whom she had met while working at Purdue. The night before she passed away, Swenson told Knudson that "bodies don't last forever, you know. I think mine is wearing out. I may not live much longer."
In an address given at her funeral, Swenson's brother Roy paid homage to his famous sister, telling those in attendance that she would "be missed and remembered by a multitude of kin, untold thousands with whom her inspired insights, illuminated depths of this existence that were previously obscure, with whom her poetic works have established a lasting relationship."
Though she passed away almost 16 years ago, due to the efforts of those working on the Swenson project, Swenson is getting a second chance at fame that very few people, living or dead, ever receive.
"There's a dimension of what we're doing that has to do with presenting her again," Crumbley said. "This is Swenson's new life."
Biographical information taken from the book "May Swenson: A Poet's Life in Photos" By R.R. Knudson and Suzzanne Bigelow.
-mattgo@cc.usu.edu
Swenson once said of herself and her writing, "I am having fun. To make poetry is pleasure. When you write, it has a surprise in it. It tells you something you never knew you knew, and there is no obligation in it. Life is a mystery. We must not give ourselves airs. We don't know what the answers will be."
Other accomplishments during her lifetime include the receipt of several grants and fellowships including the MacArthur Fellowship which brought Swenson $380,000. Swenson taught for a short time at Purdue University in Lafayette, Ind., and published 11 volumes of poetry during her lifetime.
Shortly before her death in 1989, Swenson made one last visit to Utah to visit her family. At the time, Swenson was living with her partner, Rozanne Knudson whom she had met while working at Purdue. The night before she passed away, Swenson told Knudson that "bodies don't last forever, you know. I think mine is wearing out. I may not live much longer."
In an address given at her funeral, Swenson's brother Roy paid homage to his famous sister, telling those in attendance that she would "be missed and remembered by a multitude of kin, untold thousands with whom her inspired insights, illuminated depths of this existence that were previously obscure, with whom her poetic works have established a lasting relationship."
Though she passed away almost 16 years ago, due to the efforts of those working on the Swenson project, Swenson is getting a second chance at fame that very few people, living or dead, ever receive.
"There's a dimension of what we're doing that has to do with presenting her again," Crumbley said. "This is Swenson's new life."
Biographical information taken from the book "May Swenson: A Poet's Life in Photos" By R.R. Knudson and Suzzanne Bigelow.
-mattgo@cc.usu.edu
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